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An anonymous reader writes: Marvel Comics has announced that Thor, the thunder god whose story has been told in comic books, movies, and TV shows since the 1960s, will fall from grace, and no longer be able to wield his hammer Mjolnir. A brand new female character will take up the name Thor and continue the series. Jason Aaron, the series writer, said, "This is not She-Thor. This is not Lady Thor. This is not Thorita. This is THOR. This is the THOR of the Marvel Universe. But it's unlike any Thor we've ever seen before." Marvel's Wil Moss added, "The new Thor continues Marvel's proud tradition of strong female characters like Captain Marvel, Storm, Black Widow and more. And this new Thor isn't a temporary female substitute — she's now the one and only Thor, and she is worthy!"

True, they could at least go with Thorunn or Thora, femine forms of the name Thor. Thor is a masculine name. Though I understand that they're trying to stress that she is the superhero now, not him.

Not a big fan of the new Thor costume [marvel.com]. Too stereotypical female superhero "let's-remove-metal-from-all-sorts-of-critical-body-parts" "form-fitting steel boobs" style. You'd think if they're wanting to be progressive with the plot they'd be willing to face that old cliche. It doesn't mean you have to make them ug

The few comics I read are mostly Humanoid/Vertigo, so I'm not familiar with the original armor... But if it is any less practical than the armor displayed on that screen, it must consist of a funnel channeling all blows to the heart of the wearer.

Lets see.

Openings between the helmet and the shoulder pads, to divert blows to the neck. That gorgeous hair must flow!

Pauldrons coming short of protecting the shoulders. Can't hide too much skin!

Armpits completely exposed. Those curves must be seen!

Boob mounds channeling blows towards the center of the chest. What's the point of having a female character if you're not going to draw boobs?!

The stomach is completely exposed. Even the cloth has a belly window, to make sure that no attacker has any doubts about the entrails being vulnerable.

Frankly, it is sickening that anyone would call this travesty practical... Female armor should looks like male armor, with slightly different proportions, to account for different shoulder/hip/chest ratios. Once the padding is on, most of the differences are smoothed over.

Expensive and late period armor that can afford the added weigh would have a single bulge on the chest - to divert the blows, not two to channel them where they would do the most harm.

Do they have such little creativity that they best they can do is make a female Thor?

Yes.

Marvel Comics lost its creativity many years ago, probably no later than the time that the first Spider-Man movie debuted in the theaters (though I'd say a good 5-7 years prior). Ever since then, they 'shuffle the deck chairs' around, but nothing ever sticks. The characters always eventually revert to status quo. They make much, much more money from their licensing than they ever will on the comics, and they really don't want to kill that golden goose. Thor will be back as his usual self by the time Avengers 2 hits theaters. Bank on it.

Thor is a male god.Thor is an established character, based on the mythical Thor.Making Thor female is just a publicity stunt.Marvel can't create compelling original female characters, but that doesn't mean they should slap tits and a vagina onto existing male characters and hope they stick. What Marvel needs to do is realize that they can't create ANY compelling characters anymore, male or female, and fix that problem first.Everyone knows that the real Thor will be back once this "arc" finishes - saying something is permanent in comics is an insult to anyone who reads them.

re: not relevant anymore. I think all of the new comics/fantasy/sci fi IP is going to start coming from video games. that's the only place that's consistently making new ideas. looking forward to the assassin's creed movie, GTA movie, etc etc. Some of them will el floppo like the ones we've seen to date, but others will stick. movies, as usual, will defer to other media to create new ideas.

It has more to do with the blatant pandering. Hell, if this is your argument, then we might as well turn all superheros female in service to women's empowerment because all of them have unrealistic superpowers.

I disagree. Aunt May has a mysterious side [wordpress.com] that is only hinted at in the comics. On a more serious note: Rogue, Moonstone, Songbird (screaming mimi), Emma Frost, Mystique, AoA Blink, She-Hulk, and plenty of other women have compelling stories (and no, She-Hulk isn't just tits on a Hulk). Granted, Ororo, Jean Grey, Sue (Storm) Richards, and Alyson Blaire are all pretty boring, but there are equally boring male super heroes (actually, their respective significant others: T'Challa, Scott Summers, Reed Richards, Longshot).
Actually, now that I think about it, the current time-displaced Jean and Scott from the past are interesting.

that doesn't mean they should slap tits and a vagina onto existing male characters and hope they stick.

I agree with this 100%. They can get away with it when it's not an established character (Spider-Woman [all three of them] isn't Spider-Man. She-Hulk isn't Hulk, Lady Bullseye isn't Bullseye, Namorina isn't the Sub-Mariner), but altering an established character arbitrarily (and badly; Thor just recently went through a long disgraced period and regained his honor. Leave the poor godling alone for a while). Maybe give Lady Octopus a chance to be Peter Parker for a while? That should sit well with the fans.

Apparently none of you whiny children has ever heard of Beta Ray Bill, an orange skinned alien that was considered worthy of wielding Mjolnir (though he eventually ended up with his own hammer, Stormbreaker). He was Thor. He's a goddamn dude from another planet, and you're complaining that Thor can't be a woman?

Thor in Norse mythology never fought the fucking Hulk or ate shawarma at a local restaurant either. Or lived in the USA. The story is MADE UP. The Marvel version is twice as made up. Try to get a grip. The story goes wherever it needs to.

Right, because slapping big tits on a female character to appeal to creepy nerds is the height of enlightenment and anti-misogyny.

Taking a historic Superhero character and making it a woman is a good thing. The industry needs fewer people like you, and more young girls.

Sure, it would be if she wasn't made to have the same ridiculous and unrealistic body proportions that no woman can live up to. Same with not having your female characters just be simply riding the coattails of a popular male character. If they really believed the nonsense they are spewing they would have created an original character without ridiculous things like the huge tits. As it is, this is just comics sexism disguised as "empowerment".

Just because he prefered the existing gender of a character does not mean that he's misogynist. Not liking change to a beloved character is not a sin. You wouldn't have called him blondist, if he complained after they changed the color of his hair. Comic nerds hate change. They just do. And they love to complain. That's all he's doing complaining about a change.

There are female superheroes, so you couldn't be saying that there the statement indicated that there should not be any of those. And Thor was a male god in the mythos, so are you saying that not changing the mythos is hating women? Perhaps you meant that they were speaking in defense of continuity? Or do you instead mean that they are transexualophobes? (what exactly would be the word?)

Either way, my takeaway from your post is that if anyone were to say that George Washington did not have female reproductive organs, they must be a misogynist.

It would literally make more sense to say that Thor is transgendered and changed sex through his/her own will than to say Thor falls from grace and replaced by a different female god that also wants to be called Thor.

No, he's using the comic industries status quo to explain that everything always goes back to how it was. Peter dies with Doc Oc taking over his body, and then the Superior Spiderman arc is done and Peter is Peter once again. Another example being Wonder Woman loosing her title, and powers so they could put a blonde in the title for a bit so they could Kill Wonder Woman Artemis without Killing Wonder Woman Diana. Anyone who thought that was permanent doesn't read comics. So what we have now is Thor has lost his title and some woman is worthy to wield the hammer. She'll be Thor up until the end when the Arc Kills Her, which would be why they wanted Thor out of it. If she's lucky she'll have increased the audience and they'll save her and give her a unique title, maybe. Don't mistake Comic Book Cynicism for Misogyny. They're not the same.

Freyja would be the goddess of fertility and Eir the goddess of healingThor is the god of thunder and battle

They should have created a new character instead of taking one based on a Nordic god and made it a woman.Like Thruer, Thor's daughter.When you take someone's place you take their responsibility not their name.

This is a gimmick.They're going to turn Thor into a guy with a vagina and do some crude stab at "gaining understanding of the female condition".In short, it's pandering of the worst and creepiest sort.

While I'm not a woman, I'd find this sort of treatment both idiotic and insulting in the extreme.Since I'm a guy I just think it's idiotic and creepy.

The norse mythology is radically gender-equal compared to most other ancient mythologies, especially among the western ones. It has plenty of strong female characters to offer.

Taking a historic Superhero character and making it a woman is a good thing.

No, it's ridiculous, stupid and if I were a feminist, I'd probably hate it. What would be a good thing is to create an original female character, one that's not a sidekick or off-shot, but a fully-fledged character in her own rights, with none of the stupid revealing-armour-that-is-worthless-in-a-fight-but-makes-your-boobs-look-bigger nonsense.

Turning a male character into a woman is probably the most idiotic non-solution you could come up with.

Did you know Thor was the god of fertility, healing? Did you also now they aren't changing the Myth, just a comic character?

That is what makes it doubly stupid. If this were a pure comic book character, the dissonance would be much less.

RTFM. Thor does not become a female (and neither does Obama). The only thing that changed is who the comic book "Thor" focuses on (its now a different mortal who has Thor's hammer than it was in the past). It's like if a woman put on a cape, took the batmobile out for a spin and called herself Batman. If the comic book called "Batman" focuses on her then for all intents and purposes she "is" Batman... but it doesn't mean Bruce Wayne got a sex change.

Actually, I think that traditionally the comic book shop has been a very hostile environment for women. The average comic book nerd never believes women read comics in the first place and treat them like idiots. Then it just devolves into yet another place where guys with no sense of boundaries just treat them like shit.

Statistically, women buy the digital comics more than men do, because it separates the comics from the comic store experience.

Also, a character doesn't have to be non-sexualized to be popular with women. Women like sex. What the characters have to be are honest portrayals of women, emotionally, sexually and physically, and not some teen boy wank fantasy though.

Thor is never female in that story, he's cross-dressing pretending to by Freyja in full bridal dress and veil using her clothes and jewelry with rocks for boobies to fool clueless giants. The entire setup is extremely humiliating for Thor and he's not at all identifying with or acting feminine and only Loki saves him through clever excuses. The only one to get a peek under the veil is Trym the giant king looking to get a kiss and quickly reconsiders. When Thor is handed the hammer during the wedding ceremony he goes on a slaughter killing Trym and all his kin for what he's had to endure. Nothing in the ancient tales suggests he's anything but a male and masculine god.

This is a modern comic inspired by Norse mythology, not a retelling. The old Thor was a stout red head, the next was a blonde pretty boy, the new will be a buff woman. Big deal. Time changes things. It's not like this is the strangest story arc to take place in comics.

Oh, it wouldn't be nearly the most fucked up story from the old sagas either - Loki is a shape changer and the mother of an eight-legged horse for starters - but trying to use the old lore to justify this particular story line doesn't work.

I don't really get what you want to tell us with your wasted or not abused mod points.

I also don't get what you want to tell us with the link... did you read it? I mean if you figured it existed, you 'something' before hand.

Obviously you fail to the the difference between an 'almighty' god who can transform himself into a woman and a mere mail god "of many things" who disguises himself as a woman. The former is very impossible for you and me, the later is not.

The whole point is that it is not a new character. It's a cheap attempt to pander to the entire "diversity" and feminist angle by taking something very stereotypically masculine, and slapping a vagina on it, while trying to retain the old associations. That's why it's so offensive and demeaning to precisely the category it's trying to address - their female Thor is showcasing "equality" by taking masculinity and saying "look, females can have a part in all that goodness, too!". So in effect they end up reinforcing the stereotypes - a "strong, independent female character" is, apparently, a female pretending to be male. As opposed to a female being herself.

And don't even get me started on the whole chainmail bikini angle here, which is also quite prominent.

Thor is a character in Norse mythology. Those stories are part of our cultural heritage. And in those stories, Thor is male.

This change isn't done because it makes more sense. The Norse Thor didn't have any gender identity issues. This doesn't make the story more interesting or engaging. This is done exclusively as a gimmick to attract audiences of feminists and the obsessively politically correct.

I think these are bad reasons for making this change to the story. I think there are plenty of opportunities to borrow female heroes from history (Joan of Arc? The goddess Athena?) to create brand new stories of feminine heroism. There is no compelling reason to give Thor a gender change. Its just a (destructive and stupid) attention grab.

What part of "And this new Thor isn't a temporary female substitute — she's now the one and only Thor, and she is worthy!"" is ambiguous to you? If she is the one and only Thor, and she is a woman, then Thor is now a woman. That's how the transitive relation works.

Not the original poster, but I agree. I think it's great to have strong female main characters, on an equal footing with strong male main characters. But this ain't it. They're taking a character who is male, both in mythology and in their own storyline, and changing him into a woman. Why? Because they can't write female leads so they'll just take a male one and give him boobs? Because a female main character can't be successful without all the momentum gathered by that character being male for a thousand years?

Making Thor a woman is like making Jesus a woman, Mjolnir a screwdriver, or Huginn and Muninn storks. It's like saying "I carpooled to work today" when you came by yourself on your bike, because you want to reclaim the word "carpooling" to refer to biking to work. You can do it, but that doesn't make what you say true. Thor's gender is such a significant feature of his established identity that to change his gender is to change his identity from Thor into Something-that-is-not-Thor. You can say that this new character is both Thor and a woman, but that doesn't make it true.

The comics canon is very different from MCU canon already. Loki's a teen, Bucky Barnes was Captain America until like, last year. Thor's mom runs Asgard, Asgard is floating over the midwest US, Steve Rogers is aging to his actual age, and oh, Nick Fury's a white dude with a half-black son named Nick Fury Jr. who actually looks like the MCU version.

Asgard wasn't an afterlife, it was a different "realm", like Midgard (Earth), Miflheim, Jotunheim and the others. If they wanted some badass female warriors, they could have just used the Valkyries! If they really needed some genderbending, there's plenty of that from Loki. This is just silly.

But I guess it's okay; "this Thor isn't that Thor" or maybe even "No relation, never heard of him." if that's the case.

More than historical accuracy, what gets me is the parading. It's not even self-righteous parading, it's more like astroturf. If I was one of those social justice zealots, I'd have to ask myself whether I was being pandered to and exploited.

I don't agree with refuting OR supporting a product or media or art because of the creator or other unrelated details. I don't check if m

Actually, in Norse myth, it was Loki who was fairly transgender, often taking on female form in order to have sex with male creatures (such as an enormous stallion). He gave birth to monstrous demons from these encounters, including Sleipnir, Odin's eight-legged horse.

Just another comic book gimmick like female Robin, and gay minority Spiderman. Comic books can't go more than a few months without having to completely change everything around and "spice things up". Just try following a single title for more than two years.

The first one wouldn't have been a gimmick if she stuck around as Robin a few years. They are gimmicks because they are just to shake things up and sell more comics, they aren't being done as natural progressions of story.

First off, I am a gay guy. I love seeing lgbt characters in comics and the hero genre (Heroes Rise is fantastic). I am unhappy with the way they are doing it though. These are gimmicks.
There are non-gimmick inclusive characters. There are also a lot of gimmick ones.

One of the early What If? comics Marvel put out was about Jane Foster finding Thor's Hammer instead of Don Blake. There is a hilarious summary of it here [tumblr.com]. Not sure if it's the earliest example of Thor as a woman but's its gotta be close!

Are we so unimaginative now that it's not possible to come up with and build new characters?
Existing characters have to be completely substituted, just to piggyback on the established lore and history?

And for what? To satisfy some new gender-equality metric? Seriously, I know it would take time and effort, but surely you can come up with a compelling unique story for a woman without them having to be propped up by a different character's previous popularity.

I'm all for strong women. Hell, I have an 11 year old daughter. So I like the idea of her having strong role models. But this is a little weird considering the comic book character is based off of the male god of Norse legend by the same name. And why is this a "fall from grace" as TFS states? And why can't (s)he wield Mjolnir?

While I'm asking, why is it that most of these comic book "strong women" have a pair of double D boobs (at minimum) falling out of their outfits? I don't care how skilled a women is, she ain't gonna be fighting worth a damn in 5 inch 'fuck-me-heels' with her ass and boobs falling out of her costume.

The comic book industry has started to realize that sexism is bad for business. There's still plenty of remnants left (especially at DC - see the New 52 Starfire kerfluffle), but it's changing. The comics press has been talking about it for years, indie comics have been doing it for longer, and now Marvel is riding the trend. If you can even call it a trend - I really doubt "treating both genders as equals" is something that will go out of style, barring another dark age or something.

Does no one else remember Beta Ray Bill from Walt Simonson's run in the '80s (the golden age for Thor and large swathes of Marvel, in my opinion). Beta Ray Bill was able to wield Mjolnir and Thor's power even though he was a vaguely-humanoid alien.

Easy solution: Don't buy the books. I would guess, the overwhelming majority of comic book buyers are men. Let's see if the male readers can make a sufficiently large bump in the profit Marvel makes with the Thor books, so it cannot be compensated by the three additional female readers Marvel might get through this move. If not... you deserve not better.

Being Danish, it has always irked me, that this cartoon 'Thor' is portrayed as a tall, sledge-hammer wielding body builder with lanky, blond hair, full body wax and a placid temperament; the traditional thunder-god, son of Odin and married to Sif, was red-haired and -bearded (and generally hairy as a man would be), foul-tempered and wielded a hammer, mjolnir, that was famously short-shafted. I suppose a busty, female 'Thoretta' isn't really all that much further from the original. It just another American, plasticky product, like 'He-Man' and 'Power Rangers'.

You mean you never heard the old Viking tales of how Thor and Kaptein Amerika fought to control the rampaging monster known as the GrÃnn Raseri Mann all for the affections of the goddess Freyja? I remember there being a Shieldmaiden, Sort Enke. I believe it has something to do with how Vikings got their shields. It was all apart of the ancient Agenter Skjold saga.

"It is no mockery. Thou wilt have to do this to win Miölnir back for the defence of Asgard. Thrym will take no other recompense than Freya. I would mock him by bringing thee to him in Freya's veil and dress. When thou art in his hall and he asks thee to join hands with him, say thou wilt not until he puts Miölnir into thy hands. Then when thy mighty hammer is in thy holding thou canst deal with him and with all in his hall. And I shall be with thee as thy bridesmaid! O sweet, sweet maiden Thor!"

"Loki," said Thor, "thou didst devise all this to mock me. I in a bridal dress! I with a bride's veil upon me! The Dwellers in Asgard will never cease to laugh at me."

"Yea," said Loki, "but there will never be laughter again in Asgard unless thou art able to bring back the hammer that thine unwatchfulness lost."